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"If there’d been brain daht away It’s not a residual thing, doesn’t kick in on a delay"

They were silent for a while

She could no longer ih the shadows on the ceiling False fears had evaporated the est real fear that they faced

At last she said, "What about Regina?"

He considered her question for a while Then: "I think we should go ahead with it, fill out the papers--assu she wants to coot a probleets worse?"

"It’ll take a few days toher home By then we’ll have the results of the physical, the tests I’m sure I’ll be fine"

"You’re too relaxed about this"

"Stress kills"

"If Nyebern finds soe for a postpone is, if we tell theo ahead with the papers tohts about our suitability We ina"

The day had been so perfect, fro in Salvatore Gujilio’s office to their loveain in the ht, the worst behind them She was stunned at how suddenly they had taken another nasty plunge

She said, "God, Hatch, I love you"

In the darkness heafter dawn, they just held each other, saying nothing because, for thehad been said

Later, after they showered and dressed, they went downstairs and had s, they always listened to the radio, an all-news station That was how they heard about Lisa Blaine, the blonde who had been shot twice and thrown froht--at precisely the ti in the kitchen, had a vision of the trigger being pulled and the body tu the pavement in the wake of the car

8

For reasons he could not understand, Hatch was compelled to see the section of the freehere the dead wo will click," was all the explanation he could offer

He drove their new red Mitsubishi They went north on the coast highway, then east on a series of surface streets to the South Coast Plaza Shopping Mall, where they entered the San Diego Freeway heading south He wanted to come upon the site of the murder fro the previous night

By nine-fifteen, rush-hour traffic should have abated, but all of the lanes were still clogged They ress southward in a haze of exhaust fu spared the the night had burned off Trees stirred in a spring breeze, and birds swooped in giddy arcs across the cloudless, piercingly blue sky The day did not seem like one in which anyone would have reason to think of death

They passed the MacArthur Boulevard exit, then Jamboree, and with every turn of the wheels, Hatch felt thetenser in his neck and shoulders He was overco that he actually had followed this route last night, when fog had obscured the airport, hotels, office buildings, and the brown hills in the distance, though in fact he had been at ho to El Toro," he said, which was a detail he had not remembered until now Or perhaps he had only now perceived it by the grace of some sixth sense

"Maybe that’s where she lived--or where he lives"

Frowning, Hatch said, "I don’t think so"

As they crept forward through the snarled traffic, he began to recall not just details of the drea violence

His hands slipped on the steering wheel They were clammy He blotted them on his shirt

"I think in soerous as I … as he was …"

"What do youI had then"

Sunshine glilinted off--the multitude of vehicles that churned both north and south in two great rivers of steel and chrohty degrees But Hatch was cold

As a sign notified the Culver Boulevard exit, Hatch leaned forward slightly He let go of the steering wheel with his right hand and reached under his seat "It was here that he went for the gun … pulled it out… she was looking in her purse for so …"

He would not have been too surprised if he had found a gun under his seat, for he still had a frighteningly clear recollection of how fluidly the dreaain last night Why not now, even in daylight? He let, out a hiss of relief when he found that the space beneath his seat was eht up in the re-creation of the events in the nightmare that he didn’t i about Then he saw black-and-whites and other police vehicles parked along the interstate

Bent forward, intently studying the dusty ground before thehway and picking through the dry grass beyond it They were evidently conducting an expanded search for evidence to discover anything else that ht have fallen out of the killer’s car before, with, or after the blonde

He noticed that every one of the cops earing sunglasses, as were he and Lindsey The day was eye-stingingly bright

But the killer had been wearing sunglasses, too, when he had looked in the rearviewthe, for God’s sake?

Shades at night in bad weather was more than just affectation or eccentricity It eird